Brando and two of his friends were heard baying at the moon one night in the Cape Verde islands.The three dogs sang in unison and raised their snouts towards the moon and opened their throats. The performance lasted a few minutes. We thought very little about it at the time. Two of the dogs were later poisoned by the local savages and we never had a repeat performance. But when he is very happy after we have returned from a prolonged absence he will utter little sounds of happiness , which are not barks.,

When Maria arrived this Christmas who we think may be Brando`s sister form a later litter, she had a big vocal range. She emits a high-pitched shriek when she wants attention or is bored. She can also make a wooh-wooh-wooh sound which is modulated and very different from a bark. When we mimic this, she comes running and licks us all over, so we surmise that this is some kind of distress call. Another Podengo who lives nearby in the Cape Verdes emits a sound best described as a yodel. We are unsure of the significance of this.

I googled singing dogs and had a real shock. The You Tube pictures of a female New Guinea Singing Dog in San Diego zoo are absolutley identical to Maria, even down to the ruff of hair on both sides of her throat where upgrowing and downgrowing hair meet up behind her prominent ears. White socks, white tail tip and even the white `apron strings` behind her front legs, along her sides, are near identical. The sound emitted by the captive New Guinea Singing Dog was exactly the sound made by Brando and his friends.Here is a link if you wish to hear it for yourself. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwxV1wbBrfU‎

Portuguese explorers were the first Europeans to discover Papua and Jorge de Menenzes` ships would certainly have carried podengos to keep down the rats. Did a couple escape? The New Guinea Singing Dog is very rare and very hard to meet as it inhabits a range above 7,000 ft in the central mountains of West Papua amd Papua New Guinea. A few have been trapped by expeditions and their DNA has been tested. This was found to be similar to the Australian dingo and the Palestine Canaan dog, probably the progenitor of the Podengo. So could Brando have been singing the same song as the New Guinea Singing Dog?